METROPOLITAN OPERA ASSOCIATION INC
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Mission Statement
The Metropolitan Opera is a vibrant home for the most creative and talented singers, conductors, composers, musicians, stage directors, designers, visual artists, choreographers, and dancers from around the world. Since the summer of 2006, Peter Gelb has been the Met’s general manager—the 16th in company history. Under his leadership, the Met has elevated its theatrical standards by significantly increasing the number of new productions, staged by the most imaginative directors working in theater and opera, and has launched a series of initiatives to broaden its reach internationally. These efforts to win new audiences prominently include the successful Live in HD series of high-definition performance transmissions to movie theaters around the world. To revitalize its repertoire, the Met regularly presents modern masterpieces alongside the classics. Starting with the 2018–19 season, Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the musical helm of the company as the Met’s Jeannette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director. The Metropolitan Opera was founded in 1883, with its first opera house built on Broadway and 39th Street by a group of wealthy businessmen who wanted their own theater. In the company’s early years, the management changed course several times, first performing everything in Italian (even Carmen and Lohengrin), then everything in German (even Aida and Faust), before finally settling into a policy of performing most works in their original language, with some notable exceptions. The Metropolitan Opera has always engaged many of the world’s most important artists. Christine Nilsson and Marcella Sembrich shared leading roles during the opening season. In the German seasons that followed, Lilli Lehmann dominated the Wagnerian repertory and anything else she chose to sing. In the 1890s, Nellie Melba and Emma Calvé shared the spotlight with the De Reszke brothers, Jean and Edouard, and two American sopranos, Emma Eames and Lillian Nordica. Enrico Caruso arrived in 1903, and by the time of his death 18 years later had sung more performances with the Met than with all the world’s other opera companies combined. American singers acquired even greater prominence with Geraldine Farrar and Rosa Ponselle becoming important members of the company. In the 1920s, Lawrence Tibbett became the first in a distinguished line of American baritones for whom the Met was home. Today, the Met continues to present the best available talent from around the world and also discovers and trains artists through its National Council Auditions and Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. Almost from the beginning, it was clear that the opera house on 39th Street did not have adequate stage facilities. But it was not until the Met joined with other New York institutions in forming Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts that a new home became possible. The new Metropolitan Opera House, which opened at Lincoln Center in September 1966, was equipped with the finest technical facilities. Many great conductors have helped shape the Met, beginning with Wagner’s disciple Anton Seidl in the 1880s and 1890s and Arturo Toscanini, who made his debut in 1908. There were two seasons with both Toscanini and Gustav Mahler on the conducting roster. Later, Artur Bodanzky, Bruno Walter, George Szell, Fritz Reiner, and Dimitri Mitropoulos contributed powerful musical direction. Former Met Music Director James Levine was responsible for shaping the Met Orchestra and Chorus into the finest in the world, as well as expanding the Met repertoire. He led more than 2,500 Met performances over the course of his four-and-a-half decades with the company. When Yannick Nézet-Séguin assumes the role of Music Director in September 2018, he will become just the third maestro to occupy this position in company history. The Met has given the U.S. premieres of some of the most important operas in the repertory. Among Wagner’s works, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Das Rheingold, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal were first performed in this country by the Met. Other American premieres have included Boris Godunov, Der Rosenkavalier, Turandot, Simon Boccanegra, and Arabella. The Met’s 32 world premieres include Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West and Il Trittico, Humperdinck’s Königskinder, and five recent works—John Corigliano and William Hoffman’s The Ghosts of Versailles (1991), Philip Glass’s The Voyage (1992), John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby (1999), Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy (2005), Tan Dun’s The First Emperor (2006), and the Baroque pastiche The Enchanted Island (2011), devised by Jeremy Sams, with music by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and others. An additional 78 operas have had their Met premieres since the opera house at Lincoln Center opened in 1966. Hänsel und Gretel was the first complete opera broadcast from the Met on Christmas Day 1931.